Musings on the 1975 international congress of logic, methodology, and philosophy of science and technology

The international congress for this organization with a very long name met in 1975 in London Ontario Canada. The minutes can be found here. The first order of business was a memorial:

Just when the fifth International Congress of LMPS was about to begin, the saddest news that its participants could have imagined suddenly reached them. Professor Andrzej Mostowski, President of the DLMPS/ IUHPS had unexpectedly passed away on 22 August, 1975, that is to say, only five days before the beginning of our Congress.

And then another memorial:

Our organization, the DLMPS/IUHPS, has been singularly unfortunate in losing two of its senior officers in the four-year period 1971-75. In addition to the demise of Professor Andrzej Mostowski, our sad duty is to record also the death of Professor Grigore C. Moisil. In conjunction with the death of Professor A. Joja, his passing away also means that our field has lost its two most distinguished representatives in Romania, indeed the two main hosts and local organizers of the Fourth International Congress of LMPS in Bucharest in 1971.

This was followed by a moment of silence. This must have been a very solemn start to the conference. It is interesting to see which countries had present delegates:

• Australia (A): A. F. Chalmers
• Canada (C): Robert E. Butts, Thomas Settle, William R. Shea
• China (A): Chun-Shan Shen
• Czechoslovakia (A): Karel Berka
• Finland (B): Risto Hilpinen
• France (D): M. Bouveresse, J. L. Destouches, M. Fevrier, M. Loi
• Germany (DBR) (D): A. Menne, A. Oberschelp, W. Schwabhäuser, E. J. Thiele
• Germany (DDR) (B): Günter Klimaszewsky, Hermann Ley
• Great Britain (D): Jonathan Cohen, Mary Hesse, Heinz Post, John Watkins
• Hungary (A): Laszlo Kalmár
• Italy (A): E. Agassi
• Japan (C): Keiichiro Kamino, Shoji Maehara, Natuhiko Yosida
• Netherlands (C): H. Barendregt, J. J. de Iongh
• Poland (B): K. Szaniawski, L. Szczerba
• Sweden (B): Bengt Hansson, P. Martin-Löf
• U.S.A. (E): Richard Jeffrey, David Kaplan, Charles Parsons, Joseph Sneed, Patrick Suppes
• U.S.S.R. (D): B. M. Kedrov, M. V. Popovich, V. N. Sadovsky, V. A. Smirnov

The cold war was very alive in 1975 but delegates from the eastern bloc and western bloc were both in attendance. Maybe this meeting was supposed to represent an act of peace and collaboration. The idea being that even if their countries hated each other they can still do logic together. On the other hand, maybe the presence of both sides represented competition: both the eastern and western blocs wanted to be the best at logic so they each had their share of representatives.

The congress had financial difficulties this year, probably due to the 1973-1975 recession. The Late former president had this to say:

The Executive Committee of the Division of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science of the IUHPS was elected in 1971. Our activity took place in a rather difficult period. The difficulties were created by the general financial situation, an additional difficulty being created by the devaluation of the dollar in which the business of the Division is being transacted. Quite apart of these financial difficulties one should stress here also that the great diversity of our Division, consisting partly of logicians with a purely mathematical background, partly of empirical scientists (e.g., linguists), and partly of philosophers, creates problems of its own. Furthermore our activities must be coordinated in a certain degree with activities of our sister Division consisting of historians of science which increases additional difficulties.

So their plan was to lean on the division of the historians of science if they ran out of money.